Ominous Music Plays

I don’t hear well these days. I actually got my hearing checked because I struggle so frequently to actually make out what my husband is saying (he swears no one else struggles to understand him, which I can’t believe is the case). After two hours of hearing tests, the doctor cheerfully declared that I do indeed have hearing loss, but it’s well within the range expected for a person my age.

Still, I really have a hard time hearing people, a lot of the time. I have to put closed caption on for most TV shows, especially the ones where people tend to mumble.

My husband and I are watching The Outsider right now. We just started it. It’s very good, and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I also can’t understand a damn word anyone is saying. We had to turn on the closed captioning about 15 minutes into episode one.

The thing with closed captioning is it’s not just for people like me who can’t make out what the actors are saying. Closed captioning is for people who can’t hear anything at all. It not only spells out the dialogue, it also narrates the sounds.

The Outsider is a mystery thriller based on a Stephen King novel. I’ll admit that I knew nothing about the book before I started watching the show, but I assumed it would be weird, and possibly gruesome. It’s definitely both.

There is a lot of Christopher-Nolan’s-Inception-esque-hard-rumbling-noise-type music in this. The closed captioning is always alerting viewers to the tone of the music playing, even though the music never really seems to change. Sometimes it’s characterized as Ominous. Sometimes as Dramatic. Sometimes as Suspenseful.

I started noticing the different categorizations for the music, trying to discern if I could distinguish between what the CC considers Ominous, as opposed to Dramatic or Suspenseful. To my ear, it all sounds the same.

Maybe I just don’t have the ability to distinguish between Ominous and Dramatic. Maybe I don’t recognize the tones.

Two weeks ago, when my husband and I were preparing to return home from Seattle on the same day that the first death from COVID-19 was confirmed a couple of dozen miles away, he recognized the tone of the music. He knew immediately how ominous the song was. I was sure it was Dramatic, or maybe Suspenseful, but he knew that Ominous was the right word.

His closed captioning still reminds me every day of how Ominous this situation is. I’ve long since admitted that Dramatic and Suspenseful are not the right words, but sometimes I still need him to remind me of where we really stand. This thing is going to get so much worse before it starts to get better. Ominous might not be strong enough a word.

And yet, we need to keep living. We need to make our way through the days. I think sometimes that maybe I need to be reminded of Ominous, because my brain wants to hear it as Dramatic or Suspenseful, because those are easier soundtracks to live with. Dramatic and Suspenseful might play out in a number of different ways, but Ominous always ends up the same.

The reality is, no matter how I go about my own days, ominous music plays, but maybe I’m better off with a different, less depressing, closed captioning.